


Amon The Good

by wizardlice



Category: Schindler's List (1993)
Genre: Concentration Camps, F/M, Historical, Maids, Nazis, One-Sided Attraction, Sadism, So Wrong It's Right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:01:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5450987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizardlice/pseuds/wizardlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To strike her was correct; to touch her was a crime. Kommandant Amon Goeth is tempted to ruin by taboo desires. Amon/Helen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Amon despised her. He despised her trembling body, the flesh which constantly threatened to soil him, the skin which bruised so easily, disturbing his guests. And that was usually all he felt for her.

But sometimes, deep inside a bottle sent by the Herr Direktor, when the sweat beaded on his forehead and soaked his uniform, when the world was warm and giving to the touch, and Helen was there by his side…sometimes he loved her. She was a good servant, devoted, her cooking excellent. From within that bottle, his vision warped by the rosy, sticky glass, Helen beckoned him with needy eyes, craved his discipline. A fruit at its peak of ripeness. She dangled, sweet-smelling and pliant in his hands, maddening him until he found himself beating her to keep from kissing her.

Amon knew better than to touch her. His friend, Oskar Schindler, was known to have been close with Jews, and Amon had defended him before the Schutzstaffel when he was arrested for it. The Herr Direktor had drunkenly kissed a Jewess at a party. Amon sweated through the trial and when he returned home to his villa, Helen was the first thing he saw. Amon didn't even remove his white gloves before striking her.

God, how he hated her, and yet he couldn't kill her. Something always stayed his hand and the luger seemed to weigh a thousand pounds until he holstered it once again.

"Get up, bitch." He would finally say to the quivering mess on the floor.

The mess would pant and drag itself together and he would look away, and when he looked again, Helen Hirsch stood in its place. She would try to be silent but he could hear the blood bubble and crack in her nose when she swallowed.

There was nothing beautiful about Helen. At best, she was plain. At her worst, she was a starved, shambling ghoul. Even as the bruises from her last beating faded, hunger pains stung fresh and new in her belly. Too many times to count, she hid and wept in the cellar, cradling her shrunken stomach with broken fingers. Sometimes she sucked the grease from bones before giving them to Amon's hounds, ignoring her cut lips and tongue. If Amon had ever seen her do this, the punishment would have been unimaginable.

She never gave in, not even for an instant. He reassured himself with that knowledge, dozens, maybe hundreds of times. That hard little body never relaxed or surrendered. And it was good, because it was his place to push, and hers to resist, and if she didn't resist, then it was not good and he couldn't keep her around anymore. To strike her was correct; to touch her was a crime.

The first time he touched her was on the veranda. He was drunk again on gifted liquor. Schindler had left nearly an hour before, and Amon remained outside, too drunk to walk to bed. He lolled in the sun chair, drinking without thirst, listening to the roar of his own veins. The summer night was hot and he perspired freely, his hauptsturmfuhrer's tunic unbuttoned to the waist. The darkness was warm and close, like the inside of a womb, lulling him and at the same time igniting his melancholy. Nights like these drew him into morbid speculation, drunk and alone.

Helen appeared with a tray and began to clear away the empty glasses and dirty plates. Amon watched quietly as she loaded the wooden tray, enjoying the sight. His own Helen. His own little creature. He normally didn't care to watch the servants except to find excuses to hurt them, but he was drunk, and the task interested him. It was a pleasant distraction.

Helen noticed him looking and her features tightened.

"Do not…do not be afraid, little fraulein…" he muttered. He struggled to lift his legs from the sun chair and failed. And of course, Helen did not answer him. She gathered the corks from the ashtray, inclined her head, and turned to leave. 

"Stop!" he commanded. Even this drunk, Amon's voice held a frightening power. The Jewish girl froze. "Come here."

Trembling, Helen turned back around. With little footsteps, she inched closer to her lounging master. She stopped just out of reach. Amon tutted. The clever girl. It was strange to imagine these Jews as not being completely human. Fear was such a human emotion, stretched over the girl's plain features.

"Do not be afraid, little mouse." He crooned. Amon was not certain what he meant to do, but he had the strangest desire to touch her. He reached out and she flinched, the cups rattling on the tray. It gave him an idea.

"I was watching you carrying those things on your tray, and you really do it quite well. How is it that you can balance such heavy things so delicately?" He asked. Helen did not answer, only stared, wide-eyed, at the ground beside his feet. This encouraged him.

"You should be tested, yes? You have never dropped a dish as long as you've worked at my villa…" He swiftly reached out and caught the edge of her skirt, dragging her forwards. He let his hand brush up beneath the worn cloth, his fingertips dragging against the skin of her thigh. "I wonder what would make you drop one."

Helen shuddered violently, rattling spoons and glasses and setting the corks rolling between plates. He let the tips of his fingers worry their way up her leg. Jewish girls with their thin, muscular legs…so different from the soft German frauleins he had known. He could feel her muscles twitch.

"Ah, careful now…Drop it, and I'll shoot you where you stand."

With his left hand, he drew the luger from his trouser pocket and set it on his lap where she stared at it, transfixed. It was improbably heavy. He lifted it to point at her stomach, drawing her skirts up, up, higher…above her knees. A wide scar on her left knee, the smooth skin pitted. He drew them higher. No nylons, of course. The only women who had nylons these days were whores. Higher still, and the cotton shift she wore beneath her clothes sparkled in the glare of the watchtower lamp. She wept silently as he glutted himself on the sight of her. It was good this way, with her crying. It gratified the sadist within him. He found her misery arousing.

A noise brought his eyes up. The corks were rolling off the tray, all five of them in a row, dropping like bombs onto the paved terrace. They bounced around her feet. Helen remained still, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Amon fingered the trigger of the luger.

He was disappointed. Had she failed this game? The gun in his hand was shaking in his sweaty grip, so terribly heavy as it pointed at her. He looked at Helen's face, searching for a motive to kill, but couldn't find any. The terrified girl was barely breathing, only the tears on her cheeks moving.

One dripped onto his wrist.

Amon jerked his hand back with a shudder, dropping the luger, and rubbed his wrist on his tunic. The red-tinged moment was over, and he no longer desired anything at all, not even to slap her. He grimaced in disgust.

"It was only corks, little rat…I suppose that means you may live."

He retrieved the gun, and then, surprising himself, he also picked up the corks and pocketed them. Helen remained still, too afraid to move.

Amon imagined he could hear her heart beating, dull and muffled in the thick night air.

"You are dismissed. Go."

She turned and was gone. The melancholy was gone, too and his drunkenness, and Amon was able to rise and stumble to bed. He felt dirty.

 


	2. Chapter 2

"Please, put it out. Please." Helen Horowitz begged.

She was in her thirties, blonde, with coarse features but the delicate hands of seamstress. Around the house she was called Lena to distinguish her from the second, younger maid, Helen Hirsch. Horowitz was in charge of running the house, while Hirsch did the manual labor and cooking. Hirsch had replaced her as Amon's favourite and now it was _her_ he wanted to bring him his meals, serve his guests, trim his nails. This was nothing but a relief to Horowitz.

"You're filling the room with smoke."

Helen Hirsch ignored her. It was five-thirty in the morning. They were in the ground-floor kitchen of the villa, a spotlessly clean room with brick walls painted white, numerous bright copper and aluminum pans hanging from nails around the stove and fireplace, and crockery dangling from the wooden beams of the ceiling. It gave the room a cheerful look that was incongruous with the tension of the women who inhabited it. In the center there was a scrubbed wooden table but no chairs. Servants were expected to be on their feet in that room. A bucket of potato peelings and other scraps was kept underneath the table, to be carried out to the hounds at the end of each day. On the table there was a heavy tray partially set for breakfast with rolls, cold meat, butter and jam. Eggs were boiling on the stove.

"He'll smell it."

The other Helen was sitting on the windowsill with a bronze ashtray from taken from upstairs, smoking the stub of one of Amon's cast-away cigarettes. Her eyes were red but she had cried all her tears away during the night and now they were dry and flat.

"Let me be, for God's sake." She responded at last.

"I can't, he'll punish me too. Please, Helen?"

This seemed to move the dark-haired girl. She stubbed it out. Horowitz took the ashtray and dumped it in the fire-grate, then put it in the sink.

"Was he very cruel last night?" she said, calm now that the threat was gone. "You look terrible."

"He was strange." Helen replied. She picked at the hem of her apron. "He looked at me."

There was no need to say more, there was an understanding already of the disturbing interest Amon had in his younger maid. They did not speak of it.

The older, blonde Helen did not console her. Everyone suffered in Plaszow. Hirsch's torment was a grain of sand on a beach of human anguish. Horowitz herself was suffering, having not only lost her family but now arthritis beginning to prematurely stiffen the nimble hands that had won her the position she held in Amon's house. She was in too much pain to sympathize with the girl. Instead, she checked the pot of eggs. They had floated to the top. She fished them out of the water and placed them in a wire basket on the tray, then removed the towel from the coffee kettle on the stove and carefully poured the contents into a tall white pot on the tray. Hirsch watched with puffy eyes.

"Could you take it up to him?"

Horowitz stiffened. This was an impossible request. The two women knew Amon only wanted Hirsch to bring it, and any deviation from the norm would bring his wrath on them both.

"Don't be weak."

"I can't help it- I'm afraid I can't face him after last night."

"You have to. And he will be a different man now that its morning. He won't touch you."

"I know he won't…" Hirsch looked down at her hands, which were smudged with ash from Amon's cigarette.

"Take a moment and wash your hands, and then carry it up." That was as much gentleness as Horowitz could spare.

Hirsch slid from the windowsill and went to the basin to rinse the smoke from her hands and face. Horowitz pitied her. It had never been the same with her and Amon. He only had required obedience. What he wanted from Hirsch was much worse.

Hirsch dried her face on the dish-towel and turned to her. She looked like a spectre, washed out and pale.

"Oh, I know he's disgusting." The older woman said. "But you'll have to get through it. In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed. So hurry, bring it up and get it over with. When you come back down there will be a little time before we must start our other work…We will share the rest of the coffee." She replaced the towel over the kettle to keep the heat in. Hirsch shook her head.

"I'm already too nervous. You have it."

"You're nervous, but you should be thinking of how to survive. He wants something from you. If you're clever and strong, you could make good from it."

Hirsch looked at her with disgust and bitterness.

"What can be good? None of us will survive him."

She took the tray, which was heavy, and mounted the stairs. Horowitz sighed. 


	3. Chapter 3

But Horowitz was not always in the kitchen, her position as a household administrator taking her all over the villa during the day, which was why Helen Hirsch was alone in the kitchen when Amon came down at half-past five in the afternoon.

"I did not know of this dinner party, Herr Kommandant." Helen pleaded. She spread her hands in front of her, a gesture of honesty that was meaningless to him. "Please, I have received no instruction at all."

It was true that he had forgotten to tell the servants of Brauling's visit, but Amon himself had only gotten the wire the night before and her plaintive tone irritated him. He had been sober all day, drying out for this important business party, and the withdrawal made him sick and short-tempered. Through his discomfort, her voice sounded shrill and accusatory, like the squeal of a rat. He cuffed her around the head, knocking her against the stove. Luckily for her, she had not been cooking and the iron was cold.

"Shut up. There will be ten guests tonight. See that there is enough for everyone."

"With respect Kommandant, but how can I? I have not sent out for ingredients, and there is no meat here to cook-"

Amon grabbed her by the throat and choked her into silence, then continued to choke her because it felt right. Her chapped hands scratched uselessly against his until she buckled to the wooden floor, unconscious. He felt nothing for her in that moment but frustration. He was under pressure, sick, and in a dangerous mood, unpredictable even to himself. Hugo Brauling was coming to the villa that evening, whether dinner has ready or not. Brauling was one of the largest military distributers in the Reich and it was up to Amon to wine and dine this man into buying Oskar Schindler's useless Jew-made machine-gun shells, trench shovels, levers, hasps, joints and other parts. If this party went well, Amon could make a lot of money.

Amon had spent the day fighting nausea whilst conferring with Schindler on the phone, bullying the factory owner into writing a good contract that Brauling would want to sign. Schindler was a cheat first and a businessman second, but this particular contract had to be clean. The president had to sign it tonight. Which meant Oskar had not been allowed to insert his typical gaping loopholes, had not been able to mess with the percentages. It was difficult work to squeeze honesty from such a parched stone.

Then at some point he had fallen asleep and woken up only a few hours before dark, sweating and nervous. He realized then that in all of his preparations, he had forgotten to go downstairs and tell Helen about the party.

It was Amon's fault that there was nothing to cook. Nevertheless, he still needed this to go well. He needed the contract.

He nudged her with his boot impatiently. She stirred.

"Get up."

Helen shakily climbed to her feet, using the handle of the oven to steady herself.

"…Why…?" She rasped, her voice low and hoarse.

"Because you questioned me, and because you failed to carry out my order." He rubbed his face as a wave of nausea passed over him, and then leaned in closely, the tip of his nose nearly touching the dark curls tucked behind her ear. "If this is not a success, then when it is over I will take you outside and shoot you."

She stared at him in horror, hand clutching her bruised throat. He didn't care to be looked at that way, but instead of striking her again he turned and left, furious at himself for letting this happen, furious at her for making him feel like an ass.

He went upstairs and threw up, then washed his face in cold water. He was tense and irritable and it wasn't just nerves. He would have liked to have gone downstairs and hit Helen some more but she needed to cook. With trembling hands, he dressed in his formal olive uniform and combed his hair back, wishing he were drunk. The way he was now was no good. Amon knew he had a drinking problem, and now he realized he functioned better _with_ the liquor than without it. He could hardly remember a time he had gone a day without alcohol. It had seemed like a good idea to be sharp and sober. But he wasn't sharp. He was queasy and his head felt like a swamp. Shivering, he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

He hoped he would not have to follow through on his promise and shoot Helen tonight. He didn't think he could do it.

Downstairs, Hirsch went and found Horowitz and explained the situation.

"We will have to go and get meat from our kitchens." Horowitz said.

"Our…?" Hirsch didn't understand at first, since she stayed in the white house always. Then it dawned. The kitchens where food for the prisoners was prepared, down the hill and across the dirt yard with the rest of the camp buildings. "Oh no, no, they will know it's bad, nothing there is good enough, it's all rotten-"

"It's the only way. I'll go."

"What can I do while you're gone?" Helen had to put her faith in the older woman. She seemed to have a plan.

"You get started on dough, an egg yolk for every cup of flour. I think six cups will do. The meat will go far on spaetzle." She pointed to the colander that hung on the wall. "Wash that and we'll strain the dough through it."

She pulled down one of the large woven baskets from the ceiling beams and stuck it over her arm.

"Nobody is being shot tonight, just as long as we are resourceful."

An hour later, Amon went back down to kitchen and looked around to see what preparations had been made. There were chopped onions on the scrubbed worktable. His older housekeeper, Helen Horowitz, was standing over Hirsch's shoulder as she browned pieces of fowl in an iron skillet. He was relieved.

"Will it be ready in time?"

"Yes, Kommandant."

And it was. Also, perhaps because of Helen's good cooking, or the wine, or the friendly woman Schindler had brought to sit on Brauling's lap, but the president signed. From that point on, the dinner party began in earnest and Amon felt he could relax. He drank a few glasses of wine and began to feel better. There were actually eleven guests that night: Hugo Brauling, four of his associates, his lawyer, two SS men who were friends with Brauling, Oskar Schindler and his Krakow mistress, and the eleventh guest; the woman he had brought as a surprise for Hugo. There was not a plate for her, but she was content to eat flirtatiously from Hugo's. Amon suspected she was a whore.

It was going very well. Then Helen came to clear the dishes, and President Brauling pushed his chair back and looked her up and down.

"Amon, is this the beauty who cooked our meal?" he asked, stroking his tobacco-stained blonde mustache. "Or is this dessert?"

"She cooked the meal." Amon responded tartly as he dared. Helen was not a beauty in the classic sense of the word. Brauling jiggled the woman on his knee, who had been introduced earlier but Amon hadn't cared to remember her name, and patted his other leg.

"Room for one more!" He called out, and then laughed. The SS men laughed, and Amon tried to smile but couldn't quite get it right. He took another drink. Of course, Hugo couldn't have known she was a Jew because Amon wouldn't let her wear the yellow star. A mistake, he decided now. He desperately wanted to warn Brauling of her blood, but how could he, without embarrassing the president and incriminating himself? There were the other SS officers to worry about. It was illegal, his foolish indulgence. It smelled like _rassenschande,_ or race defilement. It would lead to very awkward questions he wasn't certain he could answer, and even if he could, it would spell his fall from grace.

Oskar Schindler made eye contact across the table and smiled good-humoredly, but there was a warning in his grin.

 _Amon,_ his eyes seemed to say. _Do not betray yourself over this little thing._

"Yes, well, she is an excellent cook. In fact, she was just returning to the kitchen." Amon said, and glowered at Helen, who had nearly finished loading her tray of dishes. She picked up on his signal and began to leave, but Hugo clapped his hands.

"Come back, frauliene! Come back, back, back," he was red-faced with wine. "I want to kiss the girl who made such wonderful spaetzle."

Helen hesitated, obviously considering disobeying, but all eyes were on her, including Amon's, who she feared most of all. She went to Brauling, holding the tray between them. Amon was torn between disgust and self-doubt. Surely this wasn't the way he acted towards her when he himself was drunk. Surely, somehow it was different. He thought it was different. It was more of a test, of a punishing game, wasn't it?

Brauling leaned forwards to kiss her, but then stopped abruptly and frowned.

The red finger-marks showed clearly on her ropey, hungry little neck, dark against her starched white collar. It told a shameful tale. Amon nearly groaned aloud in dismay.

_Once again she has humiliated me._

Brauling looked at him sharply, then at Helen again. Then he waved her off, rubbing his mouth uncomfortably as he digested this development. She disappeared and Amon felt like a bastard, unable to explain that she was a Jew, that the marks could be made sense of, if only he knew her ancestry. But better to appear a brute than something worse. Better for Brauling to see those marks, than to make guesses about what else was between them. Amon emptied the last bottle of burgundy into his glass and drained it.

"…Well, it appears we have drunk all of the wine." Oskar said in the uneasy lull. "May I suggest we switch to _starka_?"

"Wonderful idea!" Brauling stated as he lit a cigarette, the smoke making Amon's eyes burn the way the rest of his face did.

The party resumed.

They opened a number of bottles of cheap five-year aged _starka_ , a Polish variant of distilled vodka, which was indigenous to the region and easy to come by. Amon could not remember much after the starka. He drank greedily to cover his disgrace and blacked out before midnight, the contract nestled in his tunic pocket.


	4. Chapter 4

Helen dithered outside the door to the upstairs salon.   
She didn’t know what to expect this morning, whether Amon would recall the uncomfortable scene with Brauling and want revenge, or if it was all forgotten now. Six months ago, on her first night at the Villa, he had come home drunk and didn’t remember picking her out of the line of women prisoners. When Helen shut the door behind him, Amon had looked at her without recognition and introduced himself. He insisted on shaking her hand, and he smiled at her, she remembered, until he realized she was a Jew. In the morning he had gone looking for her with his gun drawn. Thankfully, he was forced to go to work before he found her.   
Helen hoped for forgetfulness, since there was no hope for forgiveness. Amon was incapable of it. 

She pushed open the door. 

Amon was waiting for her at the breakfast table. He was in uniform already and smoking a cigarette, the bronze ashtray at his elbow. She went quickly to the table and began to unload the tray, but he stopped her. 

“Just the coffee, I think. Put it here.” He pushed some papers that he had in front of him on the table to make room for a cup and saucer. She poured without looking at him, afraid to make eye contact. He seemed engrossed in paperwork. She lifted the tray to leave and his hand suddenly shot out and pulled it back down onto the table with a bang. 

“Last night, I told you to be certain there was enough for all my guests.” He said. “And yet the table was set a plate short.”

He remembered. She watched as he took the knife from the tray and used it to stir sugar into his coffee. Her eyes followed the blade, sweat prickling on her scalp and under her arms. It was so quiet she could hear the knifepoint squeal against the glass. 

Terror stroked an icy finger down her spine. She did not know if she should respond or not. Before she could make up her mind, Amon continued. 

“You humiliated me.” His lips turned down at the corners, as if pained. He was angry, she could tell. He looked like a snake about to strike. “I refuse to be embarrassed by my servants.” 

She looked at him, her heart beating painfully in her chest. He looked back. Amon’s eyes were grey and unreadable. He held her in his gaze. She felt like a rodent hypnotized by a python. He hardly seemed to blink or breathe; He stared at her like that for what felt like a full minute. 

Then he pushed the tray towards her on the table. Helen picked it up, eager to escape his gaze yet incapable of believing it was truly over. She turned and could feel his eyes on her still. The dark wooden door seemed too far away. She walked slowly with measured steps to keep from bolting in a panic. It wasn’t over, she sensed. Something was going to happen. 

Helen reached the door. She shifted the tray to one hand and turned the knob. 

As if he had been waiting for this cue, Amon flung the knife. She cringed, but it struck her in the calf and stayed in. It took everything in her power to keep from screaming and dropping the tray but somehow, some internal measure kept her in control. She gasped and trembled, but the tray remained stable. She straightened her leg, which was agonizing, and turned her head a little to look back at him. 

He was smiling. 

“What will make you drop a dish, I wonder?” he said very quietly, as if to himself. Then the smile disappeared. “Go on. Get out of my sight.” 

She limped downstairs in a terror, the knife still stuck fast in her calf.


	5. Chapter 5

August, 1943. 

Amon sat heavily on his horse, dressed uncharacteristically in a white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his peaked Hauptsturmführer cap, watching borrowed prisoners from Plaszow mix concrete in huge tubs. It was a hot day, hotter in the harsh sunlight of his courtyard. In the center of the courtyard, where the sun always shone directly and nothing would grow, a ten foot long pit had been dug and lined with sheets of scrap metal and wire. It was the skeletal base of what soon would be Amon’s lounging pool.   
Amon knew it was late in the year for such a project, but the money that would be coming in from his percentage on Brauling’s contract had inspired him to extravagance. If he was lucky, there might be time to enjoy it before the cold returned in September.   
Amon had borrowed the men from Oscar Schindler’s factory in Emalia. He didn’t think he could spare anyone from his own projects, such as the expansion of the prisoner barracks, the installation of new telephone wires, and digging stones out of the marshy southern end of the camp where he planned to put in another latrine. However, he didn’t trust Schindler’s workers. They were spoiled and slow-moving, so Amon was spending his Saturdays waving away black flies while the Schindlerjuden worked swiftly under his gaze, fearful of the luger he wore on his hip. There were three men at each tub, one pouring the powder, two stirring feverishly with long paddles to keep it from seizing or lumping up.   
It was a hell of an inconvenience. And what irritated Amon the most was that while he was losing his weekend to watch these pigs-asses, Schindler regularly left an entire factory of them alone as he came and went on unofficial business. He put his absolute faith in his Jews. It was folly to Amon. 

“They cast a spell on you, you know, the Jews…You work closely with them like I do, you see this. They have this power, it's like a virus.” Amon had told the SS colonel back at Montelupich prison. Amon knew this was true. It was a sickness, and Oskar had it bad. Plenty of other men he worked with had it, too, and they were all doomed. He hated it. It was a waste. Amon thought they should be cured, but he couldn’t imagine what the cure could possibly be. 

Amon rubbed the sweat from his forehead that had begun to run into his eyes and watched as the tubs were dragged to the edge of the rectangular trench. The soil had been cut carefully to measure, and last week the scrap-metal sheets had then been installed. Ideally, the poured concrete would adhere to the sheets and cure before summer ended. Perhaps in time for a nice weekend with Majola by the pool, or even for the hounds to have a swim in it. He smiled at this thought, despite the stinging sunburn on his forearms. 

“Ready…” The men squatted behind the enormous tubs of liquid concrete and lifted them onto one end. 

“Ein…” 

“Zwei…” 

“Drei!” The Kapo, identified by the green triangle he wore stitched to his shirt, gave the signal.

Straining with effort, they tilted the tubs and began the pour. All eyes focused on the task at hand, especially Amon’s. The concrete looked like cake batter. Nobody saw the man slip on the grass, which was slick with water that had been used in the mixing. It seemed as though one moment it was going well, and then the next, a man had fallen into the bottom of the pit. He floundered in the liquid cement, crying out in pain. His legs were broken.  
The prisoners at the top stopped pouring and looked to Amon, who swore. 

“Don’t touch the sides!” The Kapo shouted. “Hold still!” He ran over to where Amon sat on his horse. He touched his cap in respect. 

“Herr Kommandant, a problem has occurred-”

“Obviously. This will put us back a week.” Amon’s frustration rose as the situation became clearer in his mind. He looked down at the Kapo with cool menace. “This is unacceptable.” 

“I will send men to borrow a ladder from the factory -” 

“We don’t have time for that. The cement is setting, and in an hour it will be lunchtime.” Lunchtime for Amon, of course, not for the men. He looked at the pit, and the Jew at the bottom, who panted and held himself carefully to not touch the cement that clung to the margins of the pool. The man obviously would have to be carried out, and then would be unable to work for weeks. He made up his mind. 

Amon drew the luger and shot the Jew in the head. He jerked and slumped backwards into the liquid. The men, who had been speaking quietly amongst themselves, fell silent. They all looked at him with shock. 

“Keep pouring.” He ordered. The Kapo gaped. “Just push him down to the bottom.”

“But…” 

“Will he compromise the structure?” Amon asked, The men were all gathered around the edge of the pit, staring down at the body as it slowly sank into the gray sludge.

“…I don’t know.” 

“Keep pouring. I want this finished before summer ends.” 

Amon maneuvered his horse into the shade, brushing away a fly that kept landing on him. Perhaps this was not a good idea. He thought of the Jewish architect he had once dealt with, and the building that had needed to be torn down, and felt doubt tickle his heart. But he was hot and just wanted the job finished. Amon took comfort in the fact that he certainly did not have the Jew-fever. That was good.

In the kitchen, Helen had watched all of this. She was seated on the windowsill again, smoking another of Amon’s leftover cigarettes. She took quick, shallow puffs of hot smoke, eyes unfocused, her other hand worrying the bandage on her left leg. When the report of the luger cracked, she had only blinked. 

It was unhappily intimate, smoking Amon’s leftovers; the cigarettes that he had held in his mouth now in hers, his breath, the oil from his fingertips, his saliva in the paper. She was inhaling his essence, but the smoke made her feel careless and light.   
Across the yard Amon undid a couple buttons on his shirt. He was sleek for a monster, and plump from his excesses. She watched him light his own cigarette as the prisoners used their long cement mixing paddles to push the body down into the sludge. They smoked together, both captive audiences to horror, and neither affected as they should be.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize to anyone I have offended by writing this. 
> 
> Please leave a comment and tell me if you liked it!


End file.
